American Garden

In May 1935, the Parent Teachers Association Council presided over the dedication of what was then known as the American Cultural Garden with the help of schoolchildren and their mothers, who sang folk songs. Those same schoolchildren collected pennies toward the purchase of a bust of Mark Twain sculpted by Frank Jirouch. It was unveiled on the 100th anniversary of his birth.

In 1939, the B’nai B’rith presented the garden with a bust of John Hay, who was Secretary of State from 1898 to 1905. Abraham Lincoln, Artemus Ward, and Booker T. Washington are also memorialized in the garden, which became a central place for ethnic and racial conflict during the 1960s in Cleveland.